Free Speech In Hateful Times: Navigating The First Amendment After Charlottesville

FREE SPEECH IN HATEFUL TIMES: NAVIGATING THE FIRST AMENDMENT AFTER CHARLOTTESVILLE

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Our distinguished speakers will be:

Christine Sun, the Associate Director and Legal and Policy Director of the ACLU of Northern California

Zahra Billoo, the Executive Director of the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Peter Gelblum, the Chair of the Santa Cruz Chapter of ACLU-NC will be moderating the conversation.

This past August in Charlottesville, Virginia, white supremacists and neo-Nazis propounded racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic messages, conducted a torch-light march reminiscent of both the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis, and violently attacked counter-protesters, including driving a car into a crowd, killing one young woman and injuring many others. The violence that occurred in Charlottesville has caused civil libertarians around the country to examine their historic, staunch, and absolutist defense of the First Amendment when it comes into conflict with co-equal Constitutional rights, such as Equal Protection, and other vital civil liberties, including racial justice. What should lovers of civil liberties do when the goal of those seeking to exercise their rights to free speech and assembly is to deny others those same rights and/or to harm others? This conversation will explore this complex, thorny issue in depth.

Co-sponsors include RCNV, NAACP Santa Cruz County Branch, People United for Peace of SC County, CodePink Santa Cruz, Veterans for Peace Chapter 11, Jewish Voice for Peace SC, Santa Cruz Food Not Bombs, Santa Cruz County Community Coalition to Overcome Racism, The progressive Christian Forum and Showing Up for Racial Justice, Santa Cruz Sanctuary, Women's International League for Peace & Freedom (WILPF) Santa Cruz, SC for Bernie.